


In Breughel's Icarus, for instance

by Zabbers



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, M/M, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-15
Updated: 2014-12-15
Packaged: 2018-03-01 16:19:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2779673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zabbers/pseuds/Zabbers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[excerpted from Jexxer's prompt]<br/>Julius can see people’s problems, issues, and traumas as physical wounds. For the most part he does what he can but avoids looking too closely at anyone in particular. But one day Malcolm is acting worse than usual. Julius takes a moment to Look at him.</p><p>And he is horrified by what he sees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Breughel's Icarus, for instance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jexxer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jexxer/gifts).



The Nicholsons have always been able to do this. It is not a gift.

As with everything else he has inherited, Julius views the sight as his responsibility. Sometimes a burden. Sometimes a privilege. Never, ever to be taken lightly.

Nicholsons past have abused the ability, of course. The family wouldn’t occupy the position it does today if his ancestors hadn’t been so industrious. Julius himself is not above using it to his advantage from time to time, but knowing where to draw the line is never in doubt, because the experience is so unpleasant as to compel him to avoid it as much as he possibly can.

Still, the awareness is there, glimpsed out of the corner of his eye sometimes, unsought. A colleague with a feverish pallor turns out to have fallen out with his partner over the weekend. The new Secretary of State for Social Affairs and Citizenship seems to suffer an asthma attack whenever her family is mentioned around the office. Tom Davis’ secretary comes in one day after a week’s absence, and Julius has to excuse himself to retch in the men’s toilets.

It shames him that he so carefully makes sure not to _see_ her again, only regard her with the safer, more mundane vision of his first sight, everyday sight, which he filters through lenses of methodically ground glass.

But he brings that junior staffer a cup of tea and some of his best biscuits and discreetly gives him an opportunity to talk about his breakup. He makes sure never to let slip what he hears from an old school friend about Nicola Murray’s husband. He grieves that there’s nothing he can really do to staunch the secretary’s empty, ragged wound, but when she begins applying for other jobs, he makes certain she receives offers--good offers--straight away.

Julius Nicholson is not above mobilising his endowments from time to time.

So when Malcolm Tucker goes on the rampage, leaving stunned destruction in his wake like a localised grey storm in Armani and Paul Smith, a natural disaster in the body of a too-thin Scottish dervish, Julius tells himself it’s self-preservation and the greater good that motivate his _pressing his advantage_.

It’s more than possibly an invasion of privacy, this intentional act of looking (or rather, this deliberate act of not _not_ looking); it is undoubtedly worse than that. It is a transgression. But Malcolm has always been a subject of morbid curiosity for Julius, who has until now been very careful around him, and who has very deliberately not interrogated the reasons for his own circumspection.

 _Very well_ , he thinks as he allows himself into the man’s soul, _Let’s see what’s hurt you so much and what we can do about it._

If Malcolm Tucker is physically thin, it is nothing to the state of his psyche. In Julius’ second sight, Malcolm is severely emaciated, enormous parts of him seeming to be missing altogether, as though carved away with hot, sharp knives. It’s all Julius can do not to reach out and touch those cauterised lesions, dip trembling fingers into the terrible hollows and come away with reddened palms as though he’d run his hands through pots of pigment, drawing the lines of pain into the air between them. Below the cuffs of his pristine white sleeves, a network of scars; beneath the fabric of his tailored jacket a criss-cross of flawed marks like welts across his back.

He watches, horrified, fascinated, as Malcolm unfolds a straight razor with an enamelled handle and goes about slicing pieces out of his own chest. He places them, bloody offerings, on the table: a broken rib for the Home Office cock-up, a slab of heart for the Chief Whip’s indiscretions, a long, flayed strip of skin a gag to silence the press regarding the PM’s NATO compromise. Julius wants nothing more than to take those meticulous hands in his, to _stop them doing that_ , carrying out such desecration as should never be allowed on his body, on anybody.

It is new to him, this phenomenon of seeing the damage actually performed, as though the world has peeled itself one layer from the other and the realities, equally vivid, lie trembling like interleaved pages, like sketched lines on tracing paper. Julius doesn’t know if it is because of a difference in himself, if he is _seeing_ more intently than he ever has before, or if it is because of something about Malcolm, something about this unstoppable, fierce man, this zealot to whatever he commits to doing, no matter the cost; but for a long, blinking, dizzying time, Julius is caught in it, entangled in the exhibition of another person’s pain.

When he is finally able to breathe again, Julius wipes his eyes and picks up his glasses, hoping no one has noticed his petite wobble. He settles them on his face and looks around. Business as usual. Except...Malcolm’s frowning at him with a wary, appraising expression. But, no. The furrowed brow smooths over almost immediately, and the perplexity is gone, overridden by more pressing priorities.

For the remainder of the meeting, Julius is subdued, his original purpose put aside in light of these unwelcome insights.

At the end of it, he gathers his papers and gets to his feet, still thinking as he drifts out of the conference room.

Malcolm’s hand lands on the inside crook of his elbow, the hand that never stops speaking as urgently as his voice, the hand that wreaks its most ostentatious damage on itself.

“Julius,” he says in an undertone. “A word.”

Julius meets Malcolm’s eyes, and he realises as he is pinned by their glare that he has already made some form of involuntary oath, unbeknownst to him but not entirely unwittingly. He has pledged, in his heart, to give succor to the tormented, self-excoriating man, this man who cuts out vital slices of his soul in service to his convictions, and who believes that those sacrifices are worth so little and can never be enough. To try to ease the suffering that, perhaps, with care, might be healed.

It is his responsibility, and it is his privilege. It is his gift.

But all of that is to come.

As he allows Malcolm to stop him on that first day, the day Julius stops refusing to see, all he knows for certain is that he has to _help_ , that the world has too little mercy in it as it is for him to insist on looking away. Julius has so much to give, and Malcolm has given too much already.

“Yes, of course,” he says, and turns himself to Malcolm, drops his guard and lifts his fingers to rest lightly, in turn, on the underside of Malcolm’s elbow in a gesture meant--and he hopes, received--as a gentle assurance of support. “What can I do?”

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this prompt: http://jexxer.tumblr.com/post/105215626278/okay-you-guys-this-is-probably-either-going-to


End file.
